President Barack Obama traveled recently to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines hoping to salvage the dwindling credibility of his pivot to Asia. However, Obama confronts a daunting task, which the crystallizing perception of his administration’s weakness and naiveté has magnified.

Even some of the president’s former advisors echo this scathing assessment. Stephen W. Bosworth, Obama’s former coordinator for North Korea, has derided Obama’s Asia pivot as “ill-conceived and bungled in its implementation.” Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam have become increasingly alarmed by China’s surging arrogance and belligerence. America’s Asian allies worry that the Obama administration lacks the gumption to counter a rising authoritarian China bent on achieving hegemony in the world’s most important geopolitical region for the 21st century. Most of Asia has clamored in vain for deeper American economic, political and military engagement than the Obama administration appears willing to deliver.

The president’s trip achieved no significant breakthroughs reversing the ominous trends in the region. The administration announced that the Philippines had granted the United States military greater access to its military bases. That agreement beneficially signals a greater and long-overdue American resolve to contest China’s brazen and illegal assertions of sovereignty in the South China Sea violating the rights of Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Yet the president failed in what should have been his paramount purpose – reassuring Japan – America’s most important ally in the region. Despite the Mutual Defense Treaty binding the United States to defend Japan, the Obama administration has remained neutral until recently in Tokyo’s bitter dispute with Beijing over the sovereignty of the Senkaku Islands.

The joint statement of the president and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe fell well short of what the Japanese desired. The president offered only a qualified affirmation that the United States would “honor its obligations to the defense of Japan,” excluding any mention of the Senkakus.

These half-hearted assurances denote a larger problem eviscerating the Obama administration’s pivot to Asia: Namely, the president remains oblivious to the magnitude of the challenge a rising, authoritarian, China poses to America’s vital interests in the region. Obama remains wedded to the dangerous and false notion that American soft power and engagement can largely substitute for American military vigilance to tame China’s ambitions. Obama’s commitment to shrinking the defense budget and devolving America’s global responsibilities continues to take precedence over sustaining American military preeminence essential for deterring China and bolstering America’s Asian allies.

Katrina McFarland, assistant secretary of defense exposed the fraudulence of the “Asian pivot” in a burst of candor the administration forced her to retract: “Right now, the pivot is being looked at candidly again because candidly, it can’t happen” because of budgetary pressures, McFarland said. In the 18th century, Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, quipped that “diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.” That holds especially true for Asia, where the widening gulf between Obama’s rhetoric and reality has emboldened China and demoralized America’s Asian allies.

No Asian trip, multilateral forum or invocation of smart power will convince countries in the region of our reliability and resolve without reversing the Obama administration’s perilous reductions in American military capabilities. No complementary diplomatic strategy can buttress the credibility of the Asian pivot more than repairing the damage to America’s relationship with decent, democratic India that the Obama administration’s neglect and insensitivity has wrought. India not only has the capabilities, but the inclination, to collaborate with the United States in containing China so long as the United States wisely cultivates the strategic relationship President George W. Bush presciently initiated.

Nor can any Asian pivot succeed without the administration robustly maintaining U.S. commitments globally. The weakness the Obama administration radiates will influence how China calculates cost and risks of expansion.